Using glass beads as bearings.

[theropod2]

All,

I was walking around with my wife at Wally World Saturday and took a side trip through the flowers and sewing department. I looked at all the nice long needles and stuff. I happened along a rack of glass beads of all sizes and shapes. Some had long bodies (+13mm) with fairly large holes (+3 mm) and every size down to some really really tiny stuff. This got me to thinking, which is dangerous, that these could be used as bearing seats, displacer glands and at other load bearing surfaces. If one were to match the ends of a crank with lateral runout stops to a pair of these beads on either side there should be very little friction. If a pair were affixed to each end of a tube so that a displacer shaft passed through smoothly wouldn't that work?

This got me to thinking even further. Why can't one use the same glass that can be melted and worked, like lab tubing, to make these to design specs?

Watches USED to run in similar "jeweled" bearings, and fine old scales had agate pivots that lasted forever. If one could grind a conical concave pivot in the stone/glass bearing and a convex conical crank end to match these should be ideal for a tiny Stirling. I would think an LTD engine might benefit a great deal from such smooth actions.

Thoughts?

R

[jimlarsen]

I use glass beads as bearings in my LTD engine designs. I found some research online from a French website that indicated there was no noticeable loss between glass beads and ball bearings under light load conditions.